Le Mans has always been about cars that have some (admittedly sometimes rather limited) sort of connection to road cars. The Deltawing has none - unless you count the Reliant Robin. It has no place in sports car racing.

Le Mans has always been about cars that have some (admittedly sometimes rather limited) sort of connection to road cars. The Deltawing has none - unless you count the Reliant Robin. It has no place in sports car racing.

Exactly. You do know that you there are/were road registered Porsche 917s, 965s and 962s? In fact, if you bought a 956, it came with a set of keys for doors and ignition. As for other sports prototypes, as I said, they have some (admittedly sometimes rather limited) sort of connection to road cars. You know, four wheels covered by bodywork, two seats, lights and so on.

Interesting that the Deltawing has gained the 56th spot for the 2011 Le Mans race (according to Autosport) so presumably it can time travel in addition to all its other supposed virtues!

Safe to say it's this he was talking about. Marino was at AAR a few days ago, I suspect getting ready to do a shakedown run with the car.

EDIT: And proof.

Ohh year.. And considering that it negotiated the bend with a violent 20mph, it hardly displayed any bodyroll at all (OK, so it rolled quite a bit, but at least the inside rear wheel stayed on the ground)

Ohh year.. And considering that it negotiated the bend with a violent 20mph, it hardly displayed any bodyroll at all (OK, so it rolled quite a bit, but at least the inside rear wheel stayed on the ground)

R

Beats some people's predictions of the thing rolling over when trying to tackle a corner at 5mph though.

They followed the rules, they got cars complied and legally registered for legal road use, more legal than the Monaro's at Bathurst 24 hour and I seem to remember BMW dicking everybody with an M3 recently as well.

You see so many unimaginative criticisms that you end up speed reading them.

I understand that people don't like the way it looks, there's no denying it looks weird and not like a 'real' racing car. But then everyone complains that there's nothing new in racing, the rules are too restrictive, etc etc.

I wonder if that can only fit within the parameters of having 4 wheels - themselves being within reasonable parameters ie; basic rectangular footprint?

No, trikes are easy to model, even in a basic package like LapSim, just set the roll stiffness of the single wheel axle to zero, etc . In ADAMS or equivalent an experienced motorsports analyst could get you laptimes with a meaningful correlation to real world, given adequate track profile and tire data and aero.

Almost like something out of Mad Max. Look closer though and you can see the thing is bristling with innovation and ingenuity. What a treasure! It doesn't look like it has been granted the status I think it deserves.

I'm against the width of the rear, I can see it tangling with other race cars such as late braking dives.

This question came to Bowlby when the thing was new. He said that the disparity between front and rear track were basically unavoidable parts of the design. However, if it were a serious problem you could always attach some carbon fibre appendages to "fill out" the front to the width of the rear track. But personally I'd love to see how drivers adapt their cornering technique with such an unusual front-end.

Almost like something out of Mad Max. Look closer though and you can see the thing is bristling with innovation and ingenuity. What a treasure! It doesn't look like it has been granted the status I think it deserves.

Glad you like it, and in case you were wondering- the propeller, I think, drives a water pump... In case anybody's interested it's Voisin Laboratoire of 1923.

This question came to Bowlby when the thing was new. He said that the disparity between front and rear track were basically unavoidable parts of the design. However, if it were a serious problem you could always attach some carbon fibre appendages to "fill out" the front to the width of the rear track. But personally I'd love to see how drivers adapt their cornering technique with such an unusual front-end.

They will adapt their technique by bringing it back to the pits and saying "Whose bloody stupid idea was this..."